nathalie shushan

The first time I visited Merzouga was entirely spontaneous. Not having booked accommodation in Fes in advance and finding that we needed a place to rest our head for the night, my friends and I agreed to travel out of the city toward a camp in the desert. It was, in many ways, the most magical night I had ever spent. I was young and open to adventure, and I was granted the gift of wonder in response to my curiosity. We laughed around a bonfire until it extinguished and we rested our heads in the sand as we watched the stars multiply above our heads. Almost ten years later, I found myself sitting among the dunes of the Sahara desert once again. As I looked at the curves along the horizon, I wondered if I’d always known that I would return or if, in some way, I never wanted to go back so I could leave the desert as special as it was in my mind  – wrapped up in a star-studded cloak and tucked away in the most revered banks of my memory. 

While there is comfort in visiting a familiar city, I’ve always felt there to be risk as well. There is excitement in the unknowingness of an experience, beauty in the discovery, that you cannot recreate. Revisiting a place requires a delicate balance of holding space for love and memory while releasing particular expectations. Instead of allowing nostalgia to dictate your journey, you can peel back layers of the city. You can watch it at different hours of the day or sit still and allow it to move around you. You can follow your heart down winding streets until it calls you to a bench in the shade of a tree – but you can’t ask it to be the same as it once was. You cannot always look to the same things to light your soul on fire. Neither of you, person nor place, can promise to be the same as you last were. It is important to release your expectations of both. 

The original title for this post was “demystifying memories” because the first time I visited the Sahara desert was so magical that the next visit could only ground the experience, make it less ethereal in my mind. What ended up actually happening was that I found peace when I recognized the fear and refused to let it control my circumstance. The second time in the desert was different, of course, because I was different – but, this time, magic was no longer only in the desert. It wasn’t an external force acting upon my soul. It was inside of me. I noticed it in the way I showed up with an open heart. I knew it couldn’t be the same and, still, I returned with curiosity, excitement and profound appreciation. Under the bowl of desert stars, my feet planted gently in the sand, I felt a radiant warmth in my chest that expanded to tell me I was exactly where I belonged.

Having thought about the bones of it when I was sitting in the desert in May, I have actively worked on this post for weeks – writing and rewriting paragraphs, feeling stuck and unsure, not knowing which specific story to tell or what conclusion I wanted to draw. It feels almost antithetical to my personality to release control, to temper my own expectations, because they have both been instrumental to my journey. Still, when I find myself frozen with indecision because I need to make the perfect choice, I recognize the importance of letting go. I don’t know what conclusion to draw because I don’t have the answer yet. I can’t tell how attached I should be to an outcome, if having expectations of myself are beneficial or if they hold me back from something greater. The one thing I am certain of is that, if I am truly meant to release expectations, I have yet to master that skill.